LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO SPEND IT ON A MENTALLY DISORDERED PERSON

"Love doesn't die a natural death. Love has to be killed, either by neglect or narcissism. Those guilty of these two crimes of the heart always hide behind excuses convenient; too ashamed, lacking in integrity and courage to face the truth. To them, it is always something other than their own actions, desires and self-importance that dictate circumstances. For these people, so blind to truth, true love can never be fully experienced for they have never really given of themselves all that they are."
Frank Salvato
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Ns always have their radar alerted to impending rejection. If we have a good sense of right and wrong the N will sense his time of manipulation and being able to confuse and lie to us is about to expire. He will devalue and discard us first. We likely won’t even know what hit us. We’ll be running around trying to get things back on track. The outcome of this will be our learning about the very deeply-ingrained core defense mechanisms of the personality disordered. Not only will we be deeply hurt by his inexplicable hurtful rejection, done in the cruelest way, but we will also fail in any attempts to fix him. The silver lining to this is that the N sensed our strengths, our ability to draw that line in the sand. So he left. That’s what they do. You are to be congratulated if this happened to you. It takes most people years to figure this out.

They say the dog who barks last wins. The N will want to be the last dog who barks. Let him. Our Ns will likely leave giving us his last bark. This is where it should end. Let him have his last parting nasty comment. Resist any thoughts of responding to the N. We do not need to defend ourselves against some lie, accusation, or threat from a mentally-disordered person. Refusing to do so is our strong suit. Letting him have his last bark will feed his disorder, and, may even give us some proof of his craziness. Use that to your advantage.

The N knows you. He knows your weaknesses. He also knows your strengths. You can bet money that he will try at some point to redrill the old well of narcissistic supply to get every last drop he can from you. Our Ns can come up with some pretty creative ways to get us to pay attention to him. It may take hours, days, months or even years for this to happen. Don’t be surprised if he waltzes back acting like nothing ever happened. Don’t get involved with him. Just pass him off with some comment like “Gee, it’s good to see you again” (look at your watch) then say “You’re looking great N. I’m really late, sorry I have to rush off.” You’ll have applied a thin layer of NS to appease him, and minimized any time with him.

The N wants to create chaos out of order. This is where a third party comes in. Triangulation. It may be the N’s x partner, a new partner, a relative or somebody else. The usual scenario is this person is causing the N all kinds of problems and this is preventing him from having a normal functional life. The N knows we want to help and he uses that knowledge. It usually doesn’t matter if our attempts are successful or not. All the N cares about is that he’s successfully managed to stir the pot and get people pitted against each other turning things into a chaotic state. The N sits back and lets the play unfold to his amusement. If he can keep you and another women too, this is just bonus NS to him. The more the merrier. Your pain is meaningless in the face of additional NS to him. Your ace card will be to know what your N is up to and if your N is in a mess, let him clean it up.

The Blame Game. Face it. We can never reach the lofty levels of the N’s expectations. No one can. If, in the beginning you felt like he was your soulmate, that was his clever little hook to get you. But later, in the reality of behind closed doors, everything will be our fault. If you’ve caught on about that Projection thing you might spot your N accusing you of doing what he is doing.

So what does your N expect? Your N expects you to be perfect. By the way, expectations change by the minute. He expects you to give him endless attention. He expects you to leave him alone. He expects you to be a sexual object giving into his every kinky thought. He expects you to want zero sex. You must figure out which is which. He expects you to put up with every imaginable verbal insult, silent treatment, rage episode he can dish out. You must never be hurt by this. He expects that everything you have or ever will have is his. It’s the price you pay for the privilege of having him in your life. He expects you to believe his lies. You are never to question him. He expects you to anticipate and meet his every need. If he slips up he expects you to join in with him blaming yourself or other people. He expects you to do all manner of things that are beneath him to free up his time for more important and pleasurable things. He expects you to flatter him in public and point out his achievements to others. You must be thrilled with any crumbs you receive and praise him enthusiastically. To enhance his image he will treat others better than you. You must not complain about this. Your narcissistic supply will become insufficient over time. He will expect you to provide him with additional supply sources. You must not expect your N to do anything. You must do everything and then when you do it you must praise your narcissist for reminding you, instructing you and giving you guidance otherwise you would never have been able to do it on your own. He expects you to overlook infidelity. If he does something illegal he expects you to look the other way. He expects you to put him on a pedestal. If it suits his purpose he will apologize and promise to do better, but fail to do so. He expects you to have no needs yourself. Your purpose is to serve him exclusively. You must never complain or fail to perform due to illness or family emergency. And if by some miracle you should do all these he will raise the bar even higher and blame you for not doing even more. These are his rights. You are expected to know it and do it. You are expected to know and accept that he will grow tired of you over time and replace you with a newer supply model. He expects you to accept this with no demands for financial support for yourself or the children. Should you fail to perform to his expectations at any time you will be devalued and discarded. You are expected to accept that your devaluation and discard is a result of failure on your part. This is his right and he expects it. He is never wrong.

Crazy People Make You Crazy. Your N is amused by your emotions. Put yourself at the eyeglass end of a microscope. You are watching a fly. It buzzes around frantically. Then it slows down or rests. Then it buzzes around frantically again. You learn that if you stick a pencil in the fly’s area it buzzes frantically. You have learned how to get your fly to buzz around. Your N knows what it takes to get you to buzz around frantically too. He will play with your emotions for his amusement. You have a much wider range of emotions than a fly and the narcissist knows what he has to do to make you look crazy, show him your fear, buzz around frantically, cry, yell, argue, or any other human emotional reaction he can get out of you. If he’s really lucky he can make you look crazier than he is. Ns like doing this. They like emotional targets. They find it amusing. This benefits them. He will make you look crazy so he can get the courts to give him custody of the children. Then he will say to people “Look what I’ve had to put up with all these years.”

Ns are repetitive. A new narcissistic supply source is valued and idealized by the N. The old one is only kept around only for any residual amusement and possible backup supply. You may have a bird’s eye view of how your replacement is idealized and their new relationship seems to be publically picture perfect. In fact, your N will often go to great lengths to make sure that you see this. This new relationship can last for an indeterminate amount of time. Do yourself a favor and let her have him lock, stock and barrel. That’s a situation you don’t want to know anything about. By the time that relationships breaks down we will want to have moved on – so far away that knowledge of it’s breakdown falls into the ‘who cares?’ category.

The N’s emotions. Hate and magical thinking are the entire repertoire of the Ns emotions. Hate you are likely all too familiar with. Magical thinking? Early in the relationship your N seemed happy? In love? Excited? Planning and Making Arrangements? – all those things that lovers do. He put on quite a show of normal behaviour didn’t he? Yes, in his magical thinking idealization stage early in your relationship he imagined he had found the new perfect person when all previous ones had failed and he worked hard to make you think so too. His magical thinking created an artificial image of the perfect life. Ns can fake emotions better than we can do the real thing. Even as a child he learned to fake tears to manipulate. They need to hide their disorder. If we had seen it from the getgo we would have gone screaming into the night. The only thing we might have spotted earlier was perhaps too much or too little emotion from him. Magical thinking has an ugly side too. At the end of a nasty breakup, our N will fall into magical thinking again as he imagines the hurt we will feel when he turns his wrath in our direction. His magical thinking includes the sheer joy of imagining us homeless, penniless in the gutter stripped of everything including our own children at his hand.

“Are you calling me a liar?” so you respond “Are you lying?” Life with the verbally abusive narcissist can be an endless jousting match. Life is way too short to spend with a mentally-disordered person who only sees you as a self-serving tool for his own purpose. Objectification: Think of your toaster. It worked great for a while, but now the handle keeps acting up, the toast ends up burned or it pops up too quickly and the toast isn’t done. So you replace it. Do you think about the feelings of the old toaster? Of course not. Your N won’t think about your feelings either. To the N you are an object. It’s that simple.